


nihil sunt

by Zanik_of_the_Dorgeshuun



Category: Runescape
Genre: F/F, Followers of the Queen of Ashes, Gen, Genetically Engineered Beings, Languages and Linguistics, Loneliness, Mildly Shippy, Unethical Experimentation, Zarosians, abuse survivor, basically all the sketchy stuff that comes with nihil, not rated cos I'm bad at ratings, rated something between T and M I guess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 20:30:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,825
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11859102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zanik_of_the_Dorgeshuun/pseuds/Zanik_of_the_Dorgeshuun
Summary: In the heart of her palace, Nex comes face to face with her past.





	nihil sunt

**Author's Note:**

> November 2017 note: this may or may not be entirely written at some point. I do think it's a pretty weak fic on the whole (apart from the nihil language, which I loved coming up with), and I'm not particularly happy with it as a start to the series I had planned.
> 
> Mark my words, though -- I do still plan to follow up on this. I've got a three- or four-part series in mind and oh boy, there's a lot of stuff I'm looking forward to write.

Char and I reclined on the couches of my palace's triclinium. I saw her fire-lit eyes taking in the splendour of it all, for the first time in thousands of years. Almost as if the Empire had never fallen.

In the days of the Empire, we would have been waited upon by servants, supplying us with a feast: grapes and wine from the vineyards south of Senntisten, exquisitely spiced roast duck from the lakes of Annakarl, pristine pastries from Paddewwa's famed bakeries. But my servants were long dead, as were the chefs who prepared the cuisine we knew. And so Char and myself lay beside a bare table, lamenting the loss of our glory days.

The air we breathed was thin with chill. But Char warmed my world.

"I remember the first time I dined here with you," she said, speaking in Infernal. "Just after the Battle of Dareeyak Fortress." She shivered despite her own heat. "I will never forget that sight. The smouldering battlefield. All our enemies gone, but all our allies, too. I thought I was alone until then I saw you. Your wings wrapped around yourself, kneeling down on the ground..."

"Do you remember who I was kneeling over?"

"I remember his name, I think. Titus?"

I remember his face as he saw me for the first time: he had been scared, as so many are. But he came to trust me, and I trusted him. We were not friends, not with our difference in rank. Perhaps we could have been, in times to come; I had planned to elevate him to the rank of Tribune, to recognise and make better use of his skill. I would have done so after the battle...

Titus had lain there, his head almost severed from his body; an enemy had slain him, then Char's desperate final assault had turned his dead flesh to ash. I had touched him and his body had crumbled. I had scattered his ashes in the wind.

"A good soldier, and it pained me to have lost him," I recalled. "A bittersweet victory. Then a bittersweet meal. We were exhausted, but at least not entirely alone."

"And now..." Char paused, flames swelling beneath her fingertips. "Dareeyak was a small town then, merely an encampment surrounding a fortress. We watched it grow into a city. That only happened because we had saved it, and for what? For our Lord's accursed general to turn it to ash!"

She looked into my eyes and her rage began to simmer to despair. I felt a pull to her, to embrace her, to comfort her.

Her rasping voice trembled: "We're alone again, Nex."

I gave in. I went to her and sat beside her on the couch, and we held each other, unashamed to cry for what was lost.

There was a scar on her stomach; it still looked new. It must have been from when _our Lord's accursed general_ stabbed her and left her to die. Whatever poison had slowed her life must have slowed her healing too. The betrayal was still so fresh.

I resisted the urge to trace the scar with my fingertips, lest I revive unpleasant memories. Instead I stroked her back to soothe her. Her warmth was inviting, her breath slowing. I whispered to her, quiet and calm: "We're never completely alone."

The doors of the triclinium opened; I turned to see a figure, winged and carapaced. Char's temperature leapt, but I was off-guard... startled to see another of my own race.

"At last," he said. "I sensed you from across the planet. I never thought I would see another of my kind here..." He took a few steps in, looked at Char behind me, and his tone changed to surprise: "Or another of my Queen's."

I released Char from my embrace and stood, coming closer to get a better measure of this newcomer. Clearly of vampyric origin, as was I, but a full foot lesser in height. Heavily armoured in spiked plate. And he looked to be _male._ My early memories were ancient, but I was sure I had only ever known my kind to be female; Zaros had explained the concept of different sexes when I first encountered species differentiated as such. Just another of many categories, like race and tribe and caste. It was through categories that Zaros understood the universe, and through them I came to understand it too.

And he could _talk._ Zaros had gifted me language; none of the other nihil could speak Infernal, but my pack would communicate through gestures, clicks and screeches. Yet this man spoke in the common tongue. How?

"How are you here?" I asked.

"Your Queen?" Char asked.

The man ignored us to ask a question of his own: "You follow Zaros?"

The answer was clear from the imperial regalia surrounding us, but I sensed the man's question was not _do you_ but _why do you_. There was a hint of hostility, even disgust. I changed my stance, readying for a potential fight. I had scrapped with other nihil before, and with so much experience since...

"We are forever loyal to our Lord," Char snarled, "and if you say his name in that tone once more, I will burn your tongue from your head." A furnace of heat grew behind me. I dared not look back and give the man an opening to attack.

"Why should I revere his name?" The nihil bared his teeth. "Zaros used me and abandoned me. Deemed me unworthy. He named me 'nothing'."

"If Zaros deemed you unworthy, then consider that perhaps you were!" I felt Char's heat radiating, burning like a sun. I sensed she was on the brink of transformation.

"Hold, Char," I said in Infernal. "This man interests me." Her heat did not die down, but at least remained stable.

It had been millennia, but the pack's language still came by instinct. I stamped with one foot, then the other; I spread my wings and arms to both sides of me, then gestured forward with both arms. Here, why, you: _why are you here?_

The nihil gave a raspy laugh, then crossed his arms across his chest, bowed his head and clicked his tongue twice. _Friend._ "I presume you had a pack to learn this from," he said, more amicable now. "Being male meant I was isolated from the females and the other males. I only had company when Zaros tried mating me with the females. But I learnt from them regardless."

"I barely had a pack," I said. "They shunned me when I grew bigger than the leaders."

"Then we both know loneliness."

The nihil began stepping around me, surveying me, looking me up and down. I followed him with my eyes as he circled me, and saw Char tense up as he passed.

"Strong but agile. Taut muscles and tough flesh. Desirable qualities in offspring. I presume Zaros attempted to mate you with some other male?"

"Never." The thought repulsed me.

His gaze was unnerving. I wondered if he wished to attempt mating with me, and found myself drawing my wings to my side to narrow myself as a target and provide shielding. I thumped my right fist on my heart, hit my belly with my other hand, and pounded my heart again, punctuating it with a screech. _My flesh is mine!_ It was something the adults would scream to our enemies, those who wished to take our flesh with their talons and their claws. The sentiment was similar here.

But he simply laughed again. "I do not desire anything so base. I was merely thinking as Zaros would think. He saw us as nothing but livestock to be bred." 

"He sees me as more! He raised me above my ungrateful pack!"

"Did he do the same for anyone else?"

I did not respond.

"I was kept in darkness, in a barred hole in the rock," he continued. "I had no pack, no happiness, no identity. No interaction beyond the females he rarely brought, with whom he forced me into mating whether I liked it or not. I had no opportunity to grow into anything better. Zaros --" he spat the name -- "he thought this was my rightful place, but he was a fool. I have grown to be so much more."

"Zaros is no fool!" Char hissed from behind. "You never truly knew him!"

"I knew him as my jailer. The one who kept me trapped and stifled my potential." To me, he did two gestures: hands crossed over the face, then fingers pulling his bottom lip down and exposing his pointed teeth. His rage-filled screech filled the room. _Zaros. **Hate.**_

Despite his hostility to my Lord, I found myself empathising. I was no stranger to imprisonment, and knew how much torture it could be. To have never experienced anything else... and at my Lord's own hands...

I had to know. "How are you here?"

He held his head high and smiled. "My Queen. She freed me from my prison and gave me a chance to live. She gave me a purpose beyond being breeding stock: power and responsibility. She gave me language, and I gave myself a name. I am Phoenix, for I have risen from the ash and become flame."

"Zaros did the same for me," I said, though my argument weakened every moment I considered his plight. But I _had_ to. "He gave me a part of himself, he gave me all that I am! I would..." It had been a source of pride before, but somehow it pained me to say it now: "I would be nothing without him."

"Would you? He thought I was nothing. But all the Queen gave me was knowledge and opportunity. And look at me..." He spread his wings to full span, standing at his full height. "I have become royalty."

Silence. His words came to rest in my mind. I felt deeply unsettled, and could hear my heartbeat in my ears. The implications of what he was saying were almost sickening.

Phoenix broke the silence. "What is your name? Do you have one?"

"I called myself Nex," I said. "It means 'violent death' in the Infernal tongue, for I will bring a violent death to all who wrong me."

"Zaros has wronged me," he replied. "He has wronged all your kind. Will you come with me, Nex?"

"You are speaking blasphemy!" Char cried from behind me. Her words simply echoed off the walls.

"And you," Phoenix said to her. "I am sure my Queen will be interested to see you. Like her, you are an Auspah, are you not?"

I turned to see her eyes widened in shock.

Again, Phoenix spoke. "Will you come with me?"

My pack never had gestures for "yes" or "no". In absence of those, I responded to him in the way he had greeted me: head bowed, arms crossed over chest, tongue clicking twice.

_Friend._

**Author's Note:**

> Headcanon: Nihil have an innate race awareness, just like Mahjarrat. They're made from the same type of energy, after all.
> 
> Had a lot of fun sketching out a basic language for the nihil. Might post a "nihil phrasebook" if anyone's interested.


End file.
